To Sleeve or Not to Sleeve?

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Jesus Chrysler

Forgiving Sins Against Mopar Since 1983
Joined
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I took a gamble on a 400 block and lost. It dropped a valve and the piston got smashed pretty good and cracked the cylinder wall. I was hoping to build a 451 or 470 in the 500HP range. Nothing too radical. Providing that the rest of the block checks out okay, do y'all think it would be worth my while to sleeve the bad cylinder and give her a new lease on life? I paid $300 for the engine with a bunch of other crap that I'm hoping to sell off. 400 blocks don't seem to be oozing out of the woodwork around here, so if it's not unfeasible or ridiculously expensive I'd like to salvage this pig.

What sayeth the A-body brain-trust?

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gotta weight the cost of sleeve vs cost of a buildabile block! competent machine shop sleeve it up and it should do fine, just is it worth the cost? gotta crunch the numbers and pick your poison!
 
Ditto. I'd sleeve them all if I had endless money.
 
Sleeving the block is perfectly acceptable. You won't have any trouble with it as long as there is enough solid material above and below the damage in the cylinder. Your damage appears to be right in the middle. That is best possible cenario. The process is cheap enough that unless you get a block for nearly free, it's not worth looking for another one.
 
I charge 200 (Canadian) to do a sleeve on the average V8 type engine , for a reference, less if more are to be done. Repaired circle track stuff that sees more than your average amount of abuse is a good proof there's nothing to be questioned, make sure who does it, does it good!
 
On a street motor I think it's o.k. On a race motor no no . We lost a 340 with a sleeve , couldn't take the pressure .
 
On a street motor I think it's o.k. On a race motor no no . We lost a 340 with a sleeve , couldn't take the pressure .
I raced a 426 hemi for 14 yrs , it had two sleeves in it when I sold it, it`s a streetcar still running today. That tell u anything ?
 
It’ll be stronger with a sleeve.
 
I ran a 427 sideoiler with seven sleeves... fix what you have.
I had a friend that was a fairly successful super stock racer, tell me that a lot of guys were sleeving their sbc blocks right off the bat , because the metal in the sleeves was better than the metal in sbc . We used 460 ford sleeves in the hemi when we did it, a real pro that died in a funny car crash did it back then .
 
Sleeve it and don't look back.

So it is written, so it shall be done!

I talked to the machine shop today and he said he would sleeve it for $150. I will scour the internets for an unmolested block over the next month or so and if I can't find anything local for $300 or less I will take the block I have to be magnafluxed and the sleeved pending a passed magmaflux check.
 
So it is written, so it shall be done!

I talked to the machine shop today and he said he would sleeve it for $150. I will scour the internets for an unmolested block over the next month or so and if I can't find anything local for $300 or less I will take the block I have to be magnafluxed and the sleeved pending a passed magmaflux check.


On stuff like what you have with a big crack like that, or even a hole (I've sleeved many cylinders that had massive cracks and golf ball sized holes in them...one was a 390 ford...I don't remember how the piston got off the rod...I think the piston came apart at the wrist pin...anyway it shoved the pin end of the rod right out the block...good thing was it went right out a core plug hole!!! So it didn't do any damage to the block, just the bore and put a golf ball sized hole, maybe a bit bigger in the cylinder) so I used the 1/8 wall sleeve and not the 3/32 wall sleeve. I also, just to give myself a bit more to work with, I look at the sleeve chart and find one that is very close to bore size.

Let's say you are working on the belly button brand of engine (the dread Chevy with a 4.00 bore) and you are already .030 over so now you want to be at .040 to fix it all. Look at the chart and find a sleeve that has about a 4.04 bore instead of a 4.00 bore. This leaves more sleeve after bore and hone and it will be more rigid. I'd rather have a sleeve that I have to machine more off to make it fit (meaning it will stick further out of the bore when set) and just trim more off of it rather than try and set a sleeve that may not be long enough.

Hope that makes sense.
 
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